The future of radio – technical innovation
Posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 3:00pm. #
This week, I’m wading through a questionnaire I was sent about the future of radio. I’ve already covered the best thing and the worst thing that could happen over the next few years for radio. Today, it’s time to go tech.
Which technological innovations will benefit the radio industry most? How?
The internet: but not for tuning into the radio necessarily (though that’s also cool, and I’m proud to have been responsible for significantly over-hauling the audio quality for the BBC’s internet radio streams).
The technological innovation is what the internet can bring to radio: personalisation, on-demand, visual accompaniment, and relevance. A FM or DAB radio (I personally don’t care which), with an IP connection for additional personalised content, brings the best of both worlds to a listener – a reliable and free over-the-air, mobile, mass-market audio source, and a personalised connection to that station as well.
A hybrid receiver – one capable of using internet and broadcast – is the most interesting place that radio is headed right now; using the internet to personalise an experience primarily delivered by broadcast.
I’m proud to be part of the team producing RadioDNS – a groundbreakingly simple piece of technology that links broadcast with IP, making some of this possible. I truly believe it will be a major part of the future of radio.
But I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface in terms of what we can do with the internet and radio; and I think that many programmers are too busy producing a linear radio service to have understood what we’re capable of in terms of designing a radio service ground-up for a new digital world.
(Do you disagree? What would you have put here? Interestingly, the questionnaire started this question with ‘Thinking not only about DAB but all technology’… Let me know your thoughts in the comments.)
Photo: Jeff Keyzer. Used under licence.



